Swap the spare

Remove the lug nuts and take off the wheel. Some wheels will stick to the rotor plate and require some persuasion to remove. With your back to the wheel, kick backwards with one foot, hitting the edge of the wheel and tire solidly with your heel, then turn the wheel 180 degrees and kick at the opposite edge. Most of the time, this will work the wheel loose.

If you have not already taken the spare out of the trunk, be very careful when doing so, since the spare can be difficult to remove.

Emergency jacks cannot reasonably be described as very stable, and too much struggle with a spare can easily push the car right off the jack. If the wheel has already been removed, pushing the car off the jack will certainly damage the brake rotor and suspension, and pretty much ruin your whole day. In the immortal words of someone whom I think was Shakespeare, this is “an outcome heartily to be avoided.”

Put the spare on the rotor and tighten the nuts or bolts. If your car has lug bolts which screw into the rotors (cough – BMW - cough) rather than lug nuts which go onto the studs attached to the rotors, it can be difficult to hold the spare in position for the bolt to go through and thread into the rotor. Rather than grow the extra hand which would seem to be required in this situation, use one foot under the spare to raise and hold it in position while you thread a lug bolt through.

Tighten the lugs with the wrench by hand first. For a 5-bolt pattern, make sure to tighten the lugs across the center in a star pattern For 4-bolt patterns, tighten the two lugs directly across from each other, then the other two.

Tightening the lugs in this pattern ensures that they will center correctly. Tighten the lugs as much as you can by hand, then repeat the same pattern using foot pressure. If your spare stays on for more than a few days, make sure to tighten the lugs again with foot pressure to ensure that nothing works itself loose.

Keep it slow

Although even a compact spare is a pretty tough wheel, there is a caveat to using them. The very thin tire of a compact spare generally wears faster than more normally-sized tires. High speeds will increase this wear substantially. Most compacts will have a sticker indicating a maximum recommended speed, which is usually 55 mph. You could probably do somewhat more than that without major problems, but higher speeds are generally both unwise and uncomfortable.

And there you have it – the proper way to swap in your spare tire. One hopes you never need this information, but it is the kind of information that when you do need it, you always need it badly.